This afternoon, I was giving an English lesson to a girl who will be entering 6th grade this fall. Her family is from Pakistan and, although she was born in this country, she speaks and writes like an English-language learner. And she very well may be. I am not privy to that information. I only happen to know she was born in the United States because she has told me. On several occasions. I almost get the feeling as if she has had to explain that far too often in her short life.
This girl is very hard-working and excruciatingly polite. I had been teaching her about a month when I discovered that I had been pronouncing her name incorrectly. She had never dreamed to tell me otherwise when I first said it wrong, and so she permitted me to continue to say it wrong. Then, one day, she had written an essay which contained her name. When she had read it, I apologized greatly, saying it was my mistake for assuming my pronunciation was correct. I acknowledged that she was far too polite to tell me otherwise (but it would have been fine with me if she had!).
Today, I presented this girl with a choice of June journal prompts from which to write a reactionary paragraph. I set no restrictions and told her that she could read through the whole month of prompts before deciding upon a topic to write about. She had only reached June 4th when she circled the topic and said she was ready to begin writing.
The prompt read:
"A new student comes into your class and is very shy. Your friends start to laugh. Write about how you would treat the new student." (prompt via havefunteaching.com)
This was her essay (we ran right until the end, so she didn't have much time to proofread. I didn't want to edit for her, but I might have automatically made a correction here or there as I copied it down. Habit.):
One time this new girl from China came into my class and felt shy in front of other people. My friends started to make fun of her but she didn't say anything. My friends started to call out names that she was weird but I told don't say anything to her because she is new to this school. So what I did was at recess I went to her and said why aren't you talking in class and she said because I used to go to a school in China and people were so nice to me. But here in America people always make fun of me when I live somewhere else in a different country. I decided to help her out and say what is your name and she said my name is Mahek. It felt really hard til the next day our teacher moved her to a table where my friends were and they said you never talk to us because you seem sad. Soon my friends got used to her and asked questions about herself and all about China. By the time everyone was at recess all of us made really good friends and were really happy. My friends learned a lesson not to be mean or cruel to other people because it hurts their feelings and you should always get to know others in a polite manner.
What an awesome kid! And what a great little essay! I am so proud of her!
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